Home sales slow, while prices soar

Houston-area home sales were up again in January, but by the smallest one-month increase since the summer of 2011, a new report shows.

Buyers closed on 3,957 single-family homes last month, up 1.7 percent over a year earlier and the lowest one-month sales volume since February 2012, the Houston Association of Realtors reported Tuesday.

For most of last year, home sales were in pre-recession territory, reaching a monthly high of 7,700 last spring.

The supply of homes for sale was flat in January compared to December at 2.6 months of inventory, meaning it would take that long to sell all the homes on the market based on recent activity. An inventory of six months is considered a balanced market.

“January is traditionally a slow time of year for home sales, but throw a depleted supply of inventory into the mix and you get exactly what the Houston market experienced last month,” HAR chairwoman Chaille Ralph said in a statement. “Until more housing inventory hits the market, we are likely to continue seeing lower sales volume and higher pricing than we did throughout 2013. It’s the basic economic principle of supply and demand playing out.”

The median price of a single-family home — the figure at which half the homes sold for more and half for less — jumped 18 percent to $177,000.

The increase was due largely to strong sales in the $200,000 to $600,000 range, according to the housing data, which are based on sales through the Multiple Listing Service, which includes properties primarily throughout Harris, Fort Bend and Montgomery counties.

Here are January sales broken out by price segment:

$1 – $79,999: decreased 46.3 percent

$80,000 – $149,999: decreased 7.9 percent

$150,000 – $249,999: increased 9.7 percent

$250,000 – $499,999: increased 41.6 percent

$500,000 – $1 million and above: increased 45.3 percent

Additional market data was released Tuesday:

Month-end pending sales totaled 3,730, a 3.9 percent gain over last year and another possible indication of a steady but lower volume of sales when the February numbers are tallied. Active listings, or the number of available properties, at the end of January fell 15.9 percent to 28,211.

January sales of townhouses and condominiums spiked 35.8 percent from a year earlier, with 432 units trading hands. The median price fell 2.3 percent to $131,570, while inventory dropped to a 2.5 months supply versus a 4 months supply in January 2013.

Single-family home rentals were up 23.6 percent compared to a year earlier, while townhouse/condominium rentals were up 13.3 percent. The average rent for a single-family home increased 4.3 percent to $1,616, while the average rent for a townhouse/condominium rose 8.3 percent to $1,508.